Congress Should Swiftly Pass Effective Gun-Control Laws

Recent events in Colorado and Georgia have focused our attention on guns and youth violence. Unfortunately those shootings are not isolated incidents. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every day in our country, 13 young people are killed in gun homicides, suicides and accidents, and 52 more are wounded.

That means that in the 30 days between the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., and the near-tragedy at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., as many as 390 young people were killed by guns and another 1,560 may have been shot.

Given these gruesome statistics, it is no wonder that the CDC calls youth gun violence a plague.

As a nation, we are finally doing something about it.

Since coming to Congress, I have worked closely with gun-control advocates Jim and Sarah Brady to identify and pass legislation to make our homes, streets and schools safe from gun violence.

This year, I co-sponsored legislation requiring national waiting periods for gun purchases and legislation requiring background checks for firearms purchased at gun shows, as well as the Children’s Gun Violence Prevention Act, requiring that safety locks and other child-proofing devices be put on guns, preventing the sale of guns to anyone younger than 18, setting stiff penalties for anyone who makes weapons accessible to minors and tracking guns used in juvenile crimes.

I have joined with Republican and Democratic colleagues in supporting these and other pieces of legislation designed to reduce youth gun violence.

One would imagine that passing these reasonable measures would be easy. Unfortunately, it is not. In the Senate, Vice President Al Gore had to vote to break a 50-50 tie to close a loophole that allowed unlicensed dealers at gun shows to sell weapons without requiring background checks.

All four guns used in the Littleton shootings were traced to private sales at gun shows. Other infamous gun-show transactions include sales to the men responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing and to the leaders of the Branch Davidian sect.

The bill passed by the Senate also mandates the sale of trigger locks with guns, bans the import of military-style large ammunition clips and prohibits violent juveniles from ever owning a firearm.

That legislation is now in the House of Representatives. We should have passed the bill the moment it arrived. Shamefully, Congress went home for a 10-day Memorial Day break without acting.

Passing these reasonable and responsible measures to keep weapons out of the hands of our children should be the first item of business when Congress returns. At the very least, we should not go home for the Fourth of July without giving our nation--our children--these long-overdue protections.

In addition to keeping guns out of the hands of children, our federal government continues to study the steps parents and teachers can take to recognize and deal with unstable children and to make our schools safer.

No one is naive enough to believe that these gun-control measures will stop all suicides, murders or gun accidents, any more than regular exercise and a good diet will guarantee that you won’t have a heart attack. Nonetheless, few people live only on bacon fat and refuse to budge from the couch, because a healthy lifestyle only helps extend one’s life. Similarly, it would be foolhardy to suggest that making it more difficult for kids to get guns wouldn’t decrease the damage they do with guns.

The absence of a perfect solution shouldn’t prevent this Congress from doing the right thing, right now. Congress needs to make passing reasonable gun-control measures the first order of business when it returns.

Every day we wait risks shattering the lives of 13 more American families.